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This collection contains historical photos of the organization „Wandervogel. Schweizerischer Bund für alkoholfreie Jugendwanderungen“. Wandervogel is the name adopted by a popular movement of German youth groups from 1896 onward. The name can be translated as rambling, hiking, or wandering bird (differing in meaning from "Zugvogel" or migratory bird) and the ethos was to shake off the restrictions of society and get back to nature and freedom.

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This collection includes photographs of bridges in the Swiss Federal Railways' former Kreis II. They were taken around the period from 1882 to 1966. The Kreis II had its administrative center in Lucerne and was one out of three major regions in which the Swiss railway network was divided from 1923 to 1998 (from 1902 to 1923 there used to be five regions).

As the middle one of the three areas the region covered the region around Basel, the Mittelland region, the Lake Lucerne Region, the Emmental, the eastern Bernese Oberland and all of Ticino. In the 19th century this area was largely operated by the Schweizerische Centralbahn, the Gotthard Railway and the Jura-Simplon Railway. Some of the bridges depicted date back to the time of the private railway companies.

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The photographs contained in this collection stem from an album named "protective structures along the Gotthard railway line" („Schutzbauten an der Gotthardlinie“). The Gotthard railway line is secured by a large number of walls, barriers, barrages and dams to protect rail traffic against natural hazards—especially rockfall and avalanches.

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The 60 photographs contained in the lavishly designed album „A tire d’aile par le saint Gothard“ takes viewers leafing through it on a picturesque journey from the heart of Switzerland way down south. It combines views of the Gotthard railway line, in continuous operation since 1882, with its historic and scenic landmarks and villages along the way.

Departing in Lucerne near the administrative building of the Gotthard railway company the viewer passes landmark buildings like the Tellskapelle and the Teufelsbrücke leading up to the mountainous section with its many bridges and tunnels continuing into Ticino and finally into the port of Genoa.

The Hauenstein base tunnel connects the City of Basel with the economic centers Zurich, Lucerne and Berne via Olten and is part of the north-south axis freight transport route through Switzerland. The route through the 1916 base tunnel succeded the prior main line Sissach - Olten (trough the Hauenstein-summit tunnel) built by the "Schweizerische Centralbahn" in 1858.

Most likely the photos were comissioned by the SBB Kreis II. Recurring motifs are tunnel workers, the construction site in front of the portals and the surroundings, e.g. the workers' settlement Tripolis on the territory of the municipality Trimbach.

The data is offered as a ZIP-archive containing one Excel-file with the textual information as well as a directory of images containing depictions of the abbreviations. The ID of the record is used as file name for the corresponding image.

The data in this collection has been compiled using crowdsourcing. Quality control measures applied to the collection included a one-pass verification by the crowd and some factual checking by experts.